The forest leaves became of an intense green-black. The trees and branches became darker. The grass was bushy. The air loosed all it’s lightness and freshness and became full of heavy perfumes of all kind.

Even the bits of sky who manage to breach through the wall of branches and leaves were darker, sinister even. The sun rays were timid, weak, dying. The birds had lost their singing, the deer saw no reason for moving, the rabbits stayed well hidden in their homes, no animal could be heard. No animal could be seen. In the forest, it reigned absolute silence and stillness. Only broken by the breath of wind or a leaf falling.

When I woke up I was in a little cage, I couldn’t stand up or stretch my legs so little it was. The intense perfume in the air, the silence, the sinister forest and my little space all made me feel like a sacrificial lamb. Scared, impotent and ignorant to what was to come.

I could only be still, I could only watch or heard, I could only feel my muscles in pain. I screamed I tried to open the cage, I scratched the bars but nothing happened. I could do nothing.

After what seemed like an eternity the cage opened. After that brief moment of joy of finally stretching myself and lie in a natural position, anxiety came to me. I looked around and suddenly realized that I couldn’t survive for long in that forest. Judging from the few lights that passed through it was still day and it was already cold.

I picked a large stick from the ground to use as armour and begin wondering in that strange forest. After seeing the hundred tree I begin noticing the shape of those trees. They had overgrown in every direction, some parts like hit by cancer were much bigger than others. Some trees had very large roots and very little above the surface. Others had strange parts or angles so much overgrow to overshadow the whole tree. While still others grew in the most bizarre shapes and sculptures. It looked like someone had modelled them one by one. A careful hand of an artist who fully immersed in the process exploring deeply each tool and each possibility.

I saw a pool, a very small pool were an intense blue liquid smelling of alcohol was. I was thirsty and thought of drinking the water. I immediately push away this though and begin wondering again.

You might image me as very stressed or afraid but I was far from that, I was confused and disoriented but not scared. After so long that nothing had happened or sound heard, I became relaxed and my mind started wandering on other things:
“What was the last time that I took a walk in nature? There is a way to purify water? How do I construct a shelter? I am hungry. What was the name of that song? Reflection? A good hamburger, that would be the best thing here. What was the last time that I took a shower? What day is it again? I am hallucinating?”

When something touched my shoulder, I turn instinctively. It was a man, no doubt about it. Yet it’s form and shape was so strange. Like the trees, even if it was hidden behind the trees, his flesh had grown in such a wild and disoriented way to be barely recognizable. It had bandages all around his arms, wore several cloaks of various colours. Wore a pendant whose symbol I ignored the meaning and whore a strange mask. A mask that I can only describe as a white husk with two dark holes for the eyes and none for the mouth.

I jumped back in fear and started crawling backwards. But that man didn’t move, it just looked at me through those dark holes, with that unnatural posture of his. With the back inclined forward and the legs low to balance the weight gained from that giant bubble of flesh, barely covered by the bondages and clothes.

Raising his hand it made me sign to follow him, I was sceptical at first and didn’t want to. The cold was entering my bones, my clothes were far to light for this climate, my throat was dry, my belly empty. When he made that sign again I begin following him reluctantly.

You might object to this saying that no sane person would follow such a man in a forest but you have to remember that me steeping away from my cellar and wonder the forest was a huge foot forward for me. The man who asked to resolve a riddle decided to let the affair to others while he watches.

After a short walk, he indicated me the pool. He came to closer to it, lowered his legs, raised a bit his mask and drank for it. Then he turned back and invited me to do the same.

No way.

For how long that man insisted I would never drink from that thing. Until he didn’t grabbed me and trow my head inside the pool, nearly drowning myself. When he pulled me back I think that I had drunk a litre of that thing. And I felt better, my throat was no more dry and arid, my thoughts were clearer, my vision more acute.

I continued following him until we didn’t to a little grove made of sticks and leaves. He removed some of them to reveal the corpse of a large animal, maybe a cow or a bull, whose flesh had turned purple, green, celeste and yellow. It stank of I don’t know what, it seemed like a mix of fruits mixed with rotten meat mixed with oriental perfumes, the bad ones.

He made again those movements and ate his raw flesh. He instructed me to do the same. Again I refused. Again he forced me to. Forcing it’s raw flesh inside my mouth until I didn’t engulf it. Again I felt better, my belly was no more empty, I felt more energetic and active.

He led me to some other parts of the forest: a stash of black bondages that I had to apply to myself. the skin of a green wolf that I had to clean myself with and a strange skull of God knows what animal was that I had to wear.

At the end of it, I felt good, not only good, I felt at my best. I was full of energy and strength, I was fast, I was agile, I had the sigh of an eagle.

Then out of nowhere, my vision became blurred and I woke up in the same bed and room that I had already sawed. With the same person, telling me the same things and putting me again back to sleep. Back to the deepest of dreams.